True Crime Campfire - Unhinged: Two Stories of Rage and Revenge

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Benjamin Franklin once warned us that whatever is begun in anger will end in shame. Probably true for most of us, but the thing is, Benji—some people have no shame. You cross them, it’s gonna be their mission to make you regret it, whatever the consequences. Join us for two bizarre stories of ladies who decided they were NOT gonna let it go. They were gonna set the world on fire.Case 1: Frenemies, the Story of Courtenay Savage--a former cop turned lingerie model who fell out with her bestie-slash-business partner and DID NOT TAKE IT WELL. Case 2: I Will Ruin You, the story of Tawny Blazejowski--a well-respected supermom who took stalking and harassment to the next level when her fiance decided to end the relationship. Sources:Florida Times-Union: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2013/08/15/year-lies-harassment-lands-st-augustine-woman-jail/15819643007/ABC news: https://abcnews.go.com/US/obsessive-exs-cyberstalking-man-fired-arrested/story?id=26256346St. Augustine Record: https://www.staugustine.com/story/news/2018/03/09/blazejowski-back-to-county-for-new-charges/13135060007/ABC's "20/20," episode "Be Careful Who You Break Up With"Oxygen's "Snapped," episode “Courtenay Savage” Investigation Discovery's "I (Almost) Got Away With It,"episode “I Got Plastic Surgery”Investigation Discovery's "Women Behind Bars," episode “Courtenay Savage and Lorri Worley” Tampa Bay Times: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2001/06/07/county-has-tough-time-gaining-evidence-in-sex-sting/ https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2008/09/24/most-wanted-fugitive-is-arrested/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Benjamin Franklin once warned us that whatever has begun in anger will end in shame. Probably true for most of us, but the thing is, Benji, some people have no shame. them, it's going to be their mission to make you regret it, whatever the consequences. Join us for two bizarre stories of ladies who decided they were not going to let it go.

They were going to set the world on fire. This is Unhinged, two stories of rage and revenge. Case one. frenemies. So, canvers, for this one, we're in Clearwater, Florida, September 7, 2006, home of Scientology. Fun fact, if you didn't know. It was a warm late summer night and Christina Ladrini and her family were sound asleep. Christina and her new baby slept in one room, while her other two kids shared a room with her mother-in-law. It was a peaceful scene, but suddenly gunshots cracked the silence from outside the house, shattering Christina's bedroom window,

and jerking her and the baby awake. A bullet hit a mirror and broken glass fell into the crib and cut the baby's arm as he screamed in shock and terror. In total, six shots flew out of the darkness and into Ladrini's small house. Nobody was hit, but it was a close thing. One of the 357 magnum rounds fired at the house plowed through the wall just 14 inches above the head of Christina's sleeping daughter. By the time Christina dared to look outside, the shooter was long gone. As terrifying as this experience was, it didn't come out of the blue. Twice in the last two months, also in the middle of the night,

a stranger had stopped outside the Ladrini's house and shot at their parked cars. But this was the first time the shooter had escalated into firing at the house where people slept. Police asked Christina, who could have done this? Did she have any enemies, any debts? Had she screwed anybody over? But the answer was no. She had no idea who would want to hurt her. and there was no doubt that their house had been targeted.

Getting your parked car shot up one time might be a random act of asshole violence, but three shootings means somebody's got it in for you. After the second shooting, detectives had suggested that Christina set up a surveillance camera on front of the house, and she'd gone down to Walmart, picked one up, and installed it. And back then, video cameras were much more of a pain in the ass than they are now. Every evening, Christina had to change out the tapes, the kind of little chore that a lot of people would let slug, after the initial feeling of crisis had passed, but Christina was too scared to do that,

and when police arrived after her house had been shot up, she sat down with detectives to watch the footage. It was black and white, and about as grainy as you might expect from a Walmart security cam in 2006, there wasn't much chance of getting a clear image of a face or a license plate. A truck pulls up,

and a figure in bulky clothing gets out and marches into the driveway. They square off and aim a heavy, handgun with both hands, calmly, fire six shots into the house, then turn, walk back to the car, and drive off. The detectives recognized one thing right away. The way the shooter stood and held the gun was the same way they'd been taught to do it. The grainy figure on the tape had training on how to shoot, which meant they might be in law enforcement. And Christina could see even more than that. As soon as the shooter turned away and walked back to the truck, it all fell into place. Christina knew that gait, that distinctive body shape.

Her heart leapt into her throat. Oh my God, she said, that's Courtney. Courtney was Courtney Savage, Christina's former business partner and at one point her best friend. Courtney White was born in New Jersey in 1975, and when she was 19, she moved down to Florida and started working as a bartender. And if you're young and blonde and cute,

it's not that hard to find work-tending bar. Can be harder, keeping those jobs, though. Courtney bounced from gig to gig for a couple of years before she saw an ad for the Corrections Academy, and after a little digging, decided that this was the career for her. It promised decent money and good benefits. Of course, with just a little imagination, it also promised lots of tough and tedious work, but Courtney was never one for much forward-thinking. While at the Corrections Academy, she befriended a fellow student, David Savage, and by the time Courtney graduated in 1996 they were dating. There weren't any immediate corrections positions available at the time,

so she went looking for a gig to make money in the short term, again responding to an ad she saw in the paper. The ad was for, quote, aromatherapy and lingerie sales and promised big money. Thousands of dollars a week. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, of course, yes, it was. Right. Not that they were lying about the money, but to get it, you had to do what they called private modeling. In a private room, the customer gets the model to put on and take off various pieces of sexy lingerie, add in some colored lighting and a soundtrack, and you might be forgiven for thinking this experience sounds more like a one-person strip club than anything else. And you'd be right. That's pretty much exactly what

it was. And the aromatherapy and lingerie store ran pretty heavy on the porn and sex toys, too. So the sales job they were advertising was basically doing private sexy dancing at a sex shop. Not exactly what she'd gone in expecting, but Courtney wasn't shy. She decided to give it a try. And like a lot of exotic dancers, immediately she was like, where the hell has this been all my life? She liked the work, for one thing, but for another, soon she was making bank, like between $5 and $800 a night, which Y B-Y boyfriend David was A-O-K with Courtney's new line of work. They were in the early 20s and already making great money.

And I'm going to go on a quick tangent here, shocker I know, because it's interesting. There's no indication that Courtney ever did more than take her clothes off, but a lot of the models at these lingerie parlors were also sex workers, which involved them in a kind of cat and mouse game with local law enforcement. Undercover officers would pay for a private show and then arrest the models if they solicited sex workers. for money. So to protect themselves, the models would only take things to the next level with a customer if he took his dick out first, which law enforcement officers weren't allowed to do on duty. And so far, the Popo's attempts to get around this little problem hadn't gone too well in the

courts, including one time in 1994 when an officer visited the satin dolls lingerie shop and pulled the tip of a plastic dildo out of his pants to try and trick the model into solicitation. I know. I am flabbergasted that it didn't work. This absolutely kills me dead. I'm fascinated by this cop too. Like, was it his idea? Like, did his captain ask him to do it? Had he ever done anything this absurd in his life before?

And about this plastic wang, like, did he have to like requisition that shit from the equipment room? Like, he goes to pick it up and the guy's like, oh, this is for work, right, Steve? And then when he failed to make the arrest, did his sergeant get all mad and, suspend him like they're always doing on law and order like you're a loose can and Steve we're going to need you to turn in your badge and your gun in your dildo which he takes out of the holster he has specially made and slams it on the sergeant's desk yeah they got to slam everything you got to slam it you got to slam it and then it just kind of wiggles sadly as he slams it down you know oh god it's so weird and funny it's so it's honestly the kind of shenanigans that I wish were

like the crimes we dealt with instead of just like, and honestly, like, honestly, I think it's bullshit to, to try and arrest sex workers like that. Shut up. Well, yeah, that's part of what makes it so absurd. There are real criminals. Like, but I do like a good shenanigan. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I love a good shenanigan. So anyway, we had to go, we had to go down that, that, that trail for a second. Well, we're back. We're back on track. Back to Courtney. She worked as a lingerie model for a year, raking in the cash, and she became friends with Christina Londrina, who was working there, too. They hit it off, talked on the phone every day, went out for lunch together all the time. Then a job opened up with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department, and Courtney packed up her garter belts and spike heels to get back on the career path she'd chosen as an intake deputy in the Tampa jail system.

But she hated it. It was boring as shit and the money was no good. Yeah, welcome to work in your early 20s. It sucks. but Courtney had an alternative and it didn't take her long to ditch the jail and go back to modeling. Although she didn't entirely give up on the badge toting career, she got a degree in law enforcement and trained as a reserve police officer while still working at the sex shop.

Her work there paid for her degree, as well as her and David's Vegas wedding in 1999 in a beautiful house in shady heels. The house that boobie's built. Good times. Yeah, mine never buy me nothing. Fucking ingrates. In 2000, Courtney got a part-time job with the Tampa PD as a reserve officer and split her time between that and modeling.

But again, it was tough, often boring work for not much money, and after a couple of years, she ditched the police and went back to modeling full time. In fact, she was doing so well she decided to open her own business, The Den, and hired her buddy Christina to be the manager. She was a smart, no bullshit kind of person, and Courtney figured she'd be a good fit. They rented a storefront and fixed it up themselves with Courtney's mom's help, and I wonder how awkward that was. Like, honey, what's this pole for? The new business thrived, selling lingerie and aromatherap products, as well as the private modeling and aromatherapy sessions that brought in the big bucks. Aromatherapy, by the way, was massage without the inconvenience of having to be licensed or therapeutic. Scented oils in touching in private rooms, and as you probably guessed, about the same degree of crossover with sex.

work as the private modeling, and we mentioned this only because we suspect it played a part in what's getting ready to happen. Courtney's place had three private rooms, and she still worked as a model there herself. She was rolling in it, and she and David, now working as a cop, went on luxury vacations while Christina stayed to mine in the store. Times were good, and then they weren't. Courtney's relationship with money was always a little weird. She liked to make it, and she liked to spend it, but only on things she wanted to spend it on. Thousands of dollars on a fun vacation to Egypt, that was Crescent Fresh. Thousands of dollars on a big wedding. She didn't care about that. Let's just zip over to Vegas and do it. And she wasn't keen on expensive dental surgery either. Who is?

Courtney suffered from a degenerative enamel disease that was basically stripping the tooth enamel off of her teeth, and she needed complete reconstructive surgery. And getting all your teeth kept costs big money like tens of thousands of dollars but you know she was making big money close to a grand a night so you just bite the bullet and pay what it costs right or how about you go to the cheapest dentist you can find in Tijuana instead and this is not to dis mexican dentistry okay you go looking for cheapest possible medical procedures you can find anywhere and you're not likely to get the best work done and within days of coming back to the states Courtney was deathly ill. She was nauseated, started losing weight, had sores all in her mouth, couldn't sleep.

She just felt awful, and she was certain her cut rate dental work was the cause, thinking her symptoms were the result of metal poisoning. She suffered for six months, and finally, in March 2005, she called Christina and said she was going to have to give the business to her. Courtney just couldn't work anymore. The only condition was that Courtney would have a job modeling when she was well enough to work again. Now, just handing over your successful business to your friend seems incredibly generous, and it's certainly not nothing, but you have to remember how Courtney made her money. I mean, it wasn't from selling teddy's and scented candles. It was from those one-on-one private modeling sessions. If she was guaranteed a place to work, there wasn't much difference

between owning and not owning the place for her. Courtney suffered from her dental work for about a year and a half before she was able to get the procedure redone in Costa Rica. This girl just hates American dentist. What can I tell you? But during this time, the den wasn't doing too great. Courtney's and Christina's versions of what went on, of course,

differ. Courtney says Christina just stopped paying rent and got evicted. Christina says the landlord wouldn't renew their lease because he'd made a deal with the bar owner next door to take over the space. But, you know, believe who you want. Courtney's more full of shit than a Thanksgiving turkey, but

believe who you want. I suspect the landlord found out they were doing illegal stuff in there, i.e. sex work and wanted them out. The den closed down anyway, and Courtney was furious, insisting to this day that Christina screwed her over. How exactly? I don't really understand. I mean, you gave her the business, Courtney. It's hers now. You can't de-gift a sex shop just because you're feeling better now. I know, right? Courtney and Christina fell out big time, but before long they patch things up. At least that's what Christina thought. It was just after 4 a.m. on July 10th, 2006, that shots were first fired outside of Christina Londini's house, peppering her parked cars with bullets. There were no witnesses, and the next morning things got even weirder when

Christina got a call from a mechanically distorted voice that said, good morning. I have a special client named Michael Spears. He said you shouldn't have gotten involved. Next time, those won't be warning shots. You have a good day now. But Christina had no idea who Michael Spears was, had never heard of the guy, and police couldn't trace the number. It was from a prepaid burner phone. A month later, the Londrina's cars were shot up again, and the detective suggested that Christina set up that security camera outside her house. When Christina identified Courtney as the shooter from the grainy surveillance footage, the cops were mostly convinced. Courtney, with her police officer training, would have been

trained to shoot in just the way they saw in the video. There was enough here for an arrest, but they wanted to get more evidence against Courtney, and they wanted to set up an easy arrest. I mean, Courtney was armed and apparently had an itchy trigger finger. So they had Christina call her old friend up and confront her, like, why the hell are you shooting up my house? Courtney claimed to not know what she was talking about, but then got angry, saying Christina owed her money from the den.

How much did she want? $2,500. of three bags of lingerie, 11 pairs of shoes, and 50 CDs that Courtney claimed to have lost when the business closed down. What is she talking about? What is she talking about? You gave her the store. I don't get it. Those 50 CDs are critical. I know. That's the deal breaker for. She wants her damn shoes back. It's like $2,500 and you could have killed one of those kids. It's unreal. She'd been trying to scare Christina into coughing up the cash, but she'd never actually let Christina know

that she wanted that money, which, I don't know, it seems like a pretty important part of any successful extortion scheme. That would seem to be a key piece of the puzzle. And honestly, it's so dumb that it kind of makes me wonder if Courtney just came up with it as a way to explain herself after the fact. Like, I think she was just mega pissed off and shooting up Christina's place made her feel better. Like the world's worst rage room, you know? Yeah.

Christina hung up on Courtney, but the cops got her to call back and arranged to meet Courtney at a restaurant so she could give her the money. Courtney didn't flat out admit to the shooting, but when Christina said, If I pay you tonight, will the shooting stop? Courtney's response was, if you give me the money you owe me, we're straight. Well played. Criminal Mastermind. That was good enough for the DA, and I'm sure you can guess what happened next. Courtney stepped out of her car into the parking lot, it was habeas grab as cops swarmed all over her. Courtney always won for calm, level-headed decisions, reacted to this by lunging for a glove

box where her cop husband David kept his gun. Oh, wow. And the cops reacted to this by tasing the shit out of her. Her anger wasn't directed to the police officers who just tasered her, though. It was, yet again, reserved for Christina. To Courtney, this was just Christina screwing her over again. To Courtney, she's the victim in every part of the story. Bish, you shot up her house with a flipping hand cannon. Where a kid's sleep? Like, were you expect her to throw you a parade?

It's just bonkers. So in the interrogation room, Courtney denied being the shooter right up until detectives told her she'd been caught on tape. And then she owned up and tried to downplay the whole thing. She's like, I'm a good shot, okay? I knew what I was doing. I wasn't trying to hurt anybody. I just wanted to put a little scare into her.

And to this day, as you can tell in interviews with her, she seems completely baffled that anybody would make a big deal out of the shootings. It's unreal. And it's worth remembering here that she was firing blind into an occupied house. She didn't know where anybody was in there. I mean, a bullet went 14 inches over the head of Christina's daughter. If that kid had just been sitting up in bed, she'd have been killed. Not that Courtney would have given a shit.

obviously. When a detective asked her what would have happened if her shots had hit one of the kids, Courtney said, those kids don't deserve to walk the face of the earth. Wow. Wow, right? Like, good luck at trial, sis. Jury's gonna love you. Courtney still denies saying that, by the way. She called the officer who interviewed her

demented. Right. And which one of you just shot up a house full of people again? I think that was you. Courtney was initially charged with discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling, which, as a a second-degree felony was not small potatoes, but it was the kind of charge that might get a first offender a short-term plus probation. That charge was just a placeholder, though, and the next morning it was revised to six separate counts of attempted second-degree murder. And because she

fired a gun while committing the crimes, that meant mandatory minimum sentences of 20 years for each count, 120 years in total. Now, I don't think that specific mandatory minimum law is still on the books in Florida, which is probably a good thing. I mean, I'm all for throwing the book at people for attempted murder. You shouldn't get a discount just because you're bad at it. But the fact is, every case is different. And we shouldn't be afraid of nuance and complication when it comes to the law. I know it's supposed to be a deterrent, but the fact is that deterrence just don't do a hell a lot of deterring, you know, so that kind of thing could hurt more than it helps. Anyway, Courtney's case got creepier and creepier the more detectives looked into it. In her car, they found a booklet on making your

own silencer. For each of the three shootings, she'd hired a different rental car to use. These were planned, calculated acts. When they went to her grandmother's house, where Courtney told them she'd hidden the gun, they found a ton of ammunition beside it, as well as face masks and duct tape. Just how far was she ultimately planning to go with this? Courtney's bond was $120,000, and it took her about a month to get it together, which she did with hubby David by putting up their house as security. So Courtney was out, and back to working modeling while she waited for her trial, but, you know, six counts of attempted murder and putting their home at risk had put, I guess you'd call it

a little strain on her marriage with David, and six months after Courtney'd made bail, he decided he was done, filed for divorce, and also rescinded his half of the bond payment. Womp, womp, womp. Now, because of this, the bond company sent a bounty hunter to go pick Courtney up, and after a brief standoff where she had to be threatened with a taser again, she was back in the slamer. And that marriage was pretty much done and dusted. There's no reconciliation after all this shit, especially when your husband's a cop, right? Like, that's a bad look. The divorce moved at warp speed. David wanted out, and Courtney wanted him to pay her half of the value of the house so she could make

bond again. The agreement was in place and money had changed hands two months after Courtney had been jailed for the second time. And she was bailed out again, apparently still without any real conception of how deep a pile of shit she was standing in. Despite her attorney telling her she could maybe get a deal for five to ten years, Courtney was convinced she was going to get probation. She just never seemed to have gotten her head around the fact that she was being charged with attempted murder and not just firing into an occupied house. If you're looking at a possible 120 years and your attorney says he can get you five to ten, I think that's pretty good. She'd have been out before she was 40.

Courtney's first preliminary hearing was on July 20th, 2007. But she wasn't there. And not because the severity of her charges had finally sunk in. There was some threat of the judge revoking her bail. We don't know why exactly. But to avoid the possibility of a few months in pre-child jail, our girl flew the coop weeks before the hearing. As it happened, Courtney had an old friend who she had a close resemblance to,

and Courtney talked to her in letting her take her driver's license. so we can add abusing a friendship to her list of gross behavior. But the resemblance wasn't quite close enough, so Courtney decided she needed to get a little cosmetic surgery. So she flew down to Mexico again to get it done. She got an upper facelift, a nose shave, and a brow lift. We saw this back in the Michelle Thier episode, too, where she got plastic surgery theoretically to help her avoid detection,

but really just because she wanted to get some work done anyway. You know, if you're having plastic surgery so people won't recognize you, you really need to go in with like a picture of two-face from Batman and say, make me look like that. Not just like a facelift and like some lip filler. We've seen it several times, haven't we? Yeah, because I mean, you still look like you, you're weirdo. Of course.

Her mom, who was a nurse, had come down with her for the surgery and it was a good thing she did because in the latest of Courtney's long list of terrible decisions, back at the hotel and still woozy from anesthesia, she took a couple of sleeping pills before bed. In the morning, her mom couldn't wake her up, and local EMS had to use a defibrillator to save her life. She spent a week in the hospital. By the time of her pretrial hearing, Courtney had recovered from her surgery and was laying low under a fake name in Tulsa, where she tended bar to make some money. After a few months, she called an old New Jersey boyfriend, and they hooked up. When he moved down to Houston for work, Courtney went with him.

They lived quietly together for nine months, which I have to say is not the greatest piece of work. by the U.S. Marshal's service? I mean, come on, guys. Of course you got to check the X's. But the marshals did make one smart move. They got Courtney onto America's Most Wanted on September 20th, 2008, and hit Patert. A tipster recognized her right away, plastic surgery or no, and gave them her address. Just two days later, in the apartment parking lot, it was Gravis 2.0. Courtney was just furious and shocked. She'd really thought she wouldn't be caught. You know, six counts of attempted murder. They'll just let that slide, right? It's been two whole years already. Why are you people still mad? That literally is her

attitude. Like, the interview I watched would just boggle your mind. She's like, what? God. Honestly, like, come on, guys. I think you're overreacting. You're the ones who should be in jail for this. Back in Florida, Courtney decided to accept a plea deal for one minimum mandatory sentence of 20 years. Although this is another thing she doesn't quite seem to grasp. Minimum mandatory means you serve every day of the sentence, but she's still hoping to get out early through the power of wishes and sparkles, I guess. And it's good she's in there. She still clearly has no concept of how completely bug nuts and dangerous her actions were. In her mind, Christina Londrina Londini is still the villain of the story, a friend who stabbed her in the back.

It's only through pure chance that Courtney didn't kill someone, and she's learned nothing. She's dangerous. All right. So moving on now to case two, I'll ruin you. The story of Tani Blazjowski. Isn't that a hell of a last name? Blaisejowski. Hell of a name. So, campers for this one, we're in St. Augustine, Florida. These are two Florida women here. We almost named it Florida women. Yeah. St. Augustine's our oldest city and one of our pretty. too. Joe Good was volunteering at one of his son's high school football games one afternoon in 2009 when he noticed a pretty blonde woman in the stands cheering on her son, one of the team's rock star players. Her name was Tani Blaisjowski, and as she and Joe struck up a conversation,

they quickly realized they had a lot in common. They were both recently divorced, raising their kids, Tani had four, Joe had two, and they both had the supermom, superdad thing down. They were both easy on the eyes, too. All that was missing from their lives was, you know, La Pacion. And it didn't take long for that first conversation to turn into a relationship. For a few years, everything was awesome. They took fun trips and Caribbean cruises. They cheered on each other's kids at their events, and Tani and Joe had a great time together. For a while. A few years into the relationship, Joe asked Tani to marry him. She'd made it very clear that she wanted him to ask her. Very clear. And he didn't want to lose her, despite a few red flags that were popping up here and there and

setting off a faint little alarm in the back of Joe's head. But, you know, he went ahead and proposed, and Tawny made an ecstatic post on social media about it with a picture where it happened and everything. But it was at this point when things really started to hit the skids. See, Joe loved Tawny, but that little alarm was still going off now and then, and he wasn't in a huge hurry to set a wedding date. And this was bringing out the demon in Tawny. She'd blow up a lot. She was suspicious. She picked fights. She made accusations. And as Joe later told ABC News, the time frame between when she'd get mad just got shorter and shorter. It escalated. And then, on the 24th of September 2012, they got in a riproaring argument and Tani said, so what? You just want me to cancel the trip I was planning for you? Yeah, Joe said, yeah, I can't do this anymore, Tani, I'm done. And he meant it. Joe couldn't take another day of Tani's bullshit. The engagement, he said, was off, and so was the relationship. I imagine there was a moment of tense silence, and then Tani said,

Are you sure you want to do this? Because I've got everything laid out to ruin you. Anybody hear that ominous pipe organ music in the background there? Now, campers, many of us have probably made threats like this at some point in our lives when a significant other really shit all over us and made us incandescent with rage, but it was probably just an empty threat. Worst case scenario, maybe I'll let the air out of his tires or sleep with his best friend, but I'm guessing none of y'all have ever meant it like our girl Tawny meant it.

When Joe was describing the good part of his relationship with Tawny to the show 2020 years later, he said she's very passionate and enthusiastic about everything she does. Yeah, we're about to find out just how enthusiastic she is. Buckle up. An hour after that breakup phone conversation, Joe got a text message, one of those ones that lets you know that the password to your email had just been changed, right? Oh boy. The next morning, Joe settled in at his desk at work to check his email and, whoa, 14 emails. He opened one and oh my God, there was a picture of him, buck naked, full frontal,

and it had been sent to all his bosses. the CEO of the company. Tani had broken into his email, sent his naked pick to God and everybody, and C-Ced him just to make sure he knew it. And that was just the first of 14 similar emails. Now, y'all, just imagine this for a second, okay? Every important person in your company

just got a personal photo album full of sex picks, supposedly from you. And that wasn't all Tani done. She'd also FedExed a box full of condoms and sex toys, with Joe listed as the sender. Joe was, of course, totally mortified, and he scrambled to try and explain to his bosses that he hadn't sent any of this stuff.

He was just going through a really bad breakup, and his ex was obviously taken some kind of bizarre revenge on him. Now, this little stunt would have been bad enough by itself, but our girl was just getting started. What do you think Tani did after executing operations show everybody Joe's Wang? Well, she beat herself up over it. I don't mean she felt guilty. I mean, she literally beat herself up.

Not very well. I've seen the pictures. It's basically just looks like she thwacked herself in the face a couple times and gave herself a little bit of a fat lip. But then she called the police, told them her ex-fiance, Joe Good, just beat her up. Retaliation for her sending those dirty picks and stuff to his bosses. Joe was hanging out at home when they knocked on his door. And despite him swear it up and down that he'd been home all.

night and hadn't touched Tani, they put him in handcuffs and hauled him to jail for domestic battery. And soon after that, a judge granted Tani an order of protection from Joe. It was crystal clear. Joe couldn't contact Tani or any of her kids or he'd go back to jail. That, of course, included phone calls. But protection order or no, Tani soon started getting threatening phone calls from Joe's number, stuff like, I know where you are and I'm coming for you.

More retaliation for the arrest and the harassing emails Tani sent to his work. That's what the police figured, and for the second time, Joe got a knock on the door and a trip back to jail. But apparently, he didn't learn his lesson because the threatening voicemail messages just kept on coming. Tani, weepy and terrified, called the cops again. This time, she said, Joe said, I should have killed you when I had the chance. She was scared for her kids. This time, the calls had come from Joe's work number. So the cop showed up and put the handcuffs on him right there at his job.

And at this point, his employers decided they'd been understanding long enough. They fired him from the job he'd been doing for over 24 years. Joe swore he hadn't made any of those threatening calls. He hadn't talked to Tani for months. But the police didn't buy it. And I mean, I'm not surprised they didn't. Tani had played them the messages. big angry male voice on her voicemail saying all kinds of mean stuff.

What the cops didn't know, of course, was that Ms. Tani was implementing phase two of Operation Destroyed Joe, and she was getting fancy with it. She'd learned to spoof phone numbers, a nifty little trick where you can make a call look like it's coming from any number you choose, and she'd found herself a convincing voice changer, which made her sound just like a pissed off dude. Joe hadn't been calling Tani. Tani had been calling herself. And because she'd already taken out the protection order against her, it meant a guaranteed criminal charge for Joe.

Not to mention getting fired from his job. I assume that was part of the plan, too. Oh, yeah. As we'll find out in a few minutes, Tani doesn't like to leave anything to chance. She's nothing, if not organized. She's basically the Marie Kondo of stalking. She should really do a TED talk.

Yeah, I'm sure she had a GPS tracker that sparked joy for her. So poor Joe's life is basically in ruins at this point. He's been arrested three times. He's got charges pending. He's got a restraining order out on him. And he's lost his six-figure job. One bright spot is his new girlfriend, Mariella Murphy.

So in the midst of the dumpster fire that is his life, he invites Mariella to go to Washington, D.C. with him for a little getaway. Good move, in my opinion. That's the kind of self-care I like to see people do, you know? Everything sucks. Treat yourself a little. it won't look so bad. Yeah, I could not agree more. Eat that chocolate, go on that trip, buy those concert tickets, you know, do your thing. It can really help a lot in these weird-ass times

we're living in. So that's what poor Joe and Mariella tried to do. Bless them, and I hope they had a great time in D.C. because when they got back, right as they got off the plane, they found airport security waiting for him. Some anonymous somebody had called about a man named Joe Good smuggling drugs in his luggage. They were going to need to detain him and search his bags. Most likely with a sigh that came from the absolute core of his soul, Joe said, sure, search all you want, all I've got is aspirin, and of course he was telling the truth. They found nothing and sent him and Mariela on their way, but not before they'd had to submit to a humiliating search and interrogation in a public place. Joe still has no idea how Taney found out he had a new

girlfriend, by the way, not to mention how she knew they were traveling to D.C. and when. Yikes. So you might think, okay, surely Toney's got this shit out of her system at this point, right? I mean, at some point, she's going to move on with her life and leave this guy alone, to which I say, oh, honey, uh-uh, our girl's just now starting to roll up her sleeves and get to it. Her next move was an anonymous call to the Crime Stoppers hotline, which was, of course, recorded. She was calling about a man named Joe Good, she said, her voice full of good citizeny concern. He gets drunk, she told the operator. I think he's having sex with him. these young teenage girls because he's into child pornography.

He was in charge of a child porn ring with other perverts. And it wasn't just that, she said. He was abusive to his kids, too. He gave them booze. He needs to be investigated. And of course he was. Again. And nobody in law enforcement or child protective services seemed to believe him

when he said he didn't do any of this stuff. After so many arrests and so many anonymous reports, people start to feel like, you know, where there's smoke there must be fire. That is, until Tony did what so many arrogant narcissist pooh-pooh heads have done before her. She got cocky and she made a little oopsie. Specifically, she started to take the harassment outside of Joe's immediate household and go after people who were just kind of barely in his orbit.

Now, according to some of the sources, there were as many as 16 of these poor souls, but we're just going to focus on a few for the sake of time. One was a co-worker of Joe's, a woman named Jenny, who for no reason whatsoever that I can discern, found herself the target of a horrific accusation that she was making homemade porn with her own kids as part of Joe's alleged pito ring. Yeah, it's disgusting. Now, if crime stoppers gets a call like that, they obviously have to take it seriously and investigate. So imagine you're Jenny, the cops show up one day at your door or God forbid at your work and drop. this on you. All because you happen to work with a guy who dumped Tawny. Obviously, the police and CPS eventually cleared her of any wrongdoing, but just imagine going through that. I mean, it's just nightmare. Tani also signed one of Joe's straight male co-workers up for a gay dating site. She sent in an anonymous tip that one of Joe's friends was taking pictures of an underage kid. She posted fake Facebook accounts in people's names with pornographic pictures.

And the next poor bastard on Tani's list was, for some reason, Joe's girlfriend Mariela's landlord, a guy named Doug. Poor Doug, he's just minding his own bees, trying to rent out an apartment he owns, and now this flipping lunatic is sending him shit like this, in all caps with about $8 trillion exclamation points. If Mariela Murphy is not out of your rental property within 30 days, and then she puts down an address, will burn to the ground. The address, of course, was Doug's house. I guess she figured if she made Mariela of a problem, old Doug would get freaked out and evict her. Yeah, but look, if she thought that, she didn't know Doug. Doug's a stand-up guy. He would never.

I don't know. I actually have no idea how Doug reacted to this. I just love that his name is Doug. Doug is this episode's Dan, you know, from a couple weeks ago. I love it. Poor Doug. Justice for Doug. He's just an avatar that we can project our hope.

and dreams on to, you know? Poor old Doug. Poor old Doug. So, yeah, all told, Tani harassed 16 people in multiple states over the course of seven months. Everybody was somehow connected to Joe. Many of them, she'd never even met. And after months of trying to ignore it and make it go away, Joe decided it was time to hit back. He asked an attorney named Brian Schorstein to take his case.

Shorestein didn't want to initially. He was scared Tani would come after him, which I totally get. Oh, God. Yeah, me too. But when he looked at the hell Joe and the other victims were going through, he couldn't bring himself to turn them away. He got in touch with the detectives who had been involved in the case and advocated for his client. And as it turned out, investigators were already starting to figure out that there was something fishy going on. I mean, why would Joe himself harass all these other people? It didn't make sense. They were starting to suspect Tani was behind

all these weird anonymous calls and letters. And that made them suspicious of her original assault claim, too. Detective Shannon Andrews later told the show 20-20. It was hard to keep up with. She was stalking faster than we can investigate. Not to do another comparison, but it's like she's the sonic, the hedgehog of stalking. But, you know, Shannon was working on it, piece by piece. The tortoise versus the hair.

And then, Tani made a real bad move. She threatened Mariela's teenage daughter, Aaron, sent an all-caps letter to her grandmother saying, This is what Aaron will look like the next time Mariella sees her, if she sees her, even talks to Joe Good one more time. There were about 17 exclamation points at the end of that sentence. You know how we feel about that campers. And enclosed with the letter. was a picture of a gruesomely hacked up body. Oh, God.

This was different from all the other stuff Tani had done. This was a straight-up death threat against a teenage girl. This lit a fire under the investigators to turn up the heat on Tani. And right about that time, they got back a red-hot piece of evidence. Proof that one of the anonymous 911 calls had come from Tani's computer. Boom. Search warrant time. Tani was home when they rolled up to serve the warrant, and she let them write in pretty casually. And y'all, they found a gold mine of evidence.

A whole stack of spiral notebooks, seven of them, with hundreds of pages of notes, plots and schemes. This had obviously been Tani's full-time obsession for months now. In her cutesy middle school handwriting, she brainstormed stuff like, get a toy weapon. Call self a million times. Wednesday break fluid Yikes March 4th 2013 mailed letters about Caroline

to her bosses an envelope of Beth's mugshots and arrest records to her parents Oh my God Saw Joe in court March 7 went to Daytona mailed first round of letters About Joe to his work

30 members at corporate headquarters March 11 filed police report at McDonald's on Mariella while in St. Augustine 4-4-213 found out today Joe's house is sold in enclosing and he got fired. And this fun little note, get picture of decomposed corpse. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of this stuff.

As the detectives placed her under arrest, Tani calmly asked if she could make a to-do list for her ex-husband about the kid's care. The police said, sure, she was obviously real good at lists. Tani Blaisjowski eventually pled no contest to eight felony counts of stalking and harassment. At her sentencing, she got weepy. Not for her victims, who'd been through unmitigated hell at her hands, but for herself. Please don't take me away from my children, she said, they need me. Do they, though?

I mean, what are you going to teach them, how to take a good mugshot? How to win friends and influence people, I'm sure. In court, Tani and her attorney tried to blame her unhinged behavior on her obsessive compulsive disorder, which, as somebody with OCD myself who worked really hard in therapy, to get it under control. You know what? Fuck you, Toney. Don't you dare drag us into your flippant carnival of crazy. We got enough problems of our own. We have individual shower tiles to count before we can brush our teeth. Okay, we do not need this. And the judge must have agreed because she was sentenced to nine years in prison, plus two years of house arrest and a stunning

19 years of probation after that. As for Joe, it took a while to get the three arrests off his record. And in the meantime, his career in finances took a major hit. We hope that he's doing well now. Now, I'm going to say this again, even though we say it every time. The vast majority of abuse allegations are true, okay? If somebody says they've been assaulted, usually it's because they were. This only comes up a lot on TCC because, you know, we talk about bad people, but in reality, this really doesn't happen much at all. If somebody tells you they're being abused, there's a 99.9% chance that they are. When this fake shit does happen, though, it's usually because we're dealing with a manipulator, and that is most definitely the case with

Tawny. But take a minute and think about how clear it is when you really look at it that she was making this stuff up, especially because she pulled other people into her allegations. That's just not something most people would do, and she was so aggressive about it. I mean, an abuse survivor generally just wants out of there. That wasn't the case here. Tani repeatedly put herself back in Joe's path. She was the aggressor. She was coming at him. When you take a step back and look at the situation, it just becomes really obvious. And we've said this before, but it always bears repeating, people who do this are straight trash. I've talked about this before, obviously. I escaped a domestic abuser myself when I was younger. I mean, I've had stuff

done to me that would curl your toes. And for everybody in that situation, there's always going to be people who don't believe you. Think you're overreacting or just straight up line because they've never seen that side of your abuser. It's one of the hardest parts of getting out. So to have somebody like Tawny come along and just make this shit up, all it does is hurt the people who are really in these situations. But of course, she didn't give a shit about that because in Tawny's world, it's all about Tawny. And if you think I'm being too hard on her, get a load of this. Tauny's managed to get herself in more trouble in prison. Got to love when that happens. Over the course of about a year, from late 2016 until early 2018, she sent letters to some poor

bugger's work, plus to one of his friends or acquaintance. quote, for the purpose of creating substantial emotional and financial distress to the victim. Now, it doesn't say who the victims were or why she was harassing them, but it wasn't just these two dudes. There's another allegation too that she sent letters with questions, quote, of a personal nature that the victim found to be private to three other people. Now, only one of those ended up in a charge, but dang, like this bitch just does not quit. Now, I don't know if anything came of that charge because this was the last thing I could find on the case, but I also noticed some court filings, handwritten in that same, like, 13-year-old girl handwriting of hers, where she's

apparently sued her ex-husband over something or other, too. So I have a feeling this ain't the last we're going to hear, Ms. Tawny, and that should make us all a little nervous. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And today we want to give a special happy birthday shout out to Nadia from your son, Aden, who obviously loves you a lot and wanted to surprise you with this. So, happy birthday, lady, we hope you have the best one ever. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Meg, Lindsay, Addy, Lisa, Kellyan, and Chanel. We appreciate

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